Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Enterprise D You Need To Know

9. It Was Incredibly Empty

In an insanely good video by EC Henry, it's been worked out that the Enterprise was practically a ghost ship.

Taking the published schematics of the vessel, which listed it as 642.5m long and holding a crew of just over 1000 people, he worked out precisely how much of the ship was actually being used at any one time. On a ship with over 800,000m², that gives each person onboard almost 850m² to themselves. That is insane.

For comparative purposes, the largest military vessels today have about 1/10th that sort of size, with well over 6x the number of people on board. You could conceivably walk around all day on the ship, going about your duties, without bumping into anybody. Working out the average size of crew quarters, accommodation on the ship accounts for only 4% of the total space.

The show actually supports this theory as it's often depicted as being empty. Rarely do crew members pass each other in the corridors, and the only areas depicted as being busy as the recreational hubs like Ten Forward where you'd expect everyone to congregate.

Still though, having vast, vast areas of the ship entirely empty is a curious design choice.